During his 2016 election campaign and the presidential transition period, Donald Trump made no secret of his dislike for the European Union, NATO, and for transatlantic cooperation in general. Emmanuelle Blanc writes that despite Trump’s rhetoric, dialogues between high-level US and EU officials have continued successfully. While this key diplomatic practice is often taken for […]
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When election candidates and politicians address voters, they often face a choice in how they speak: they can be specific in what they propose, or they can be deliberately ambiguous. Gustav Meibauer looks at the trade-off between these two rhetorical strategies, and argues that many politicians – like Donald Trump – aim to get the […]
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For many, Donald Trump has pursued a ‘presidency by Twitter’, using the social media platform to set out his views and policy positions on a variety of issues. Jonny Hall looks at how Trump’s Twitter rhetoric has affected US overseas counterterrorism campaigns. He finds that Trump’s words – including his pivot from talking about terrorists […]
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In 2016, Donald Trump unexpectedly won the White House following an anti-elite populist election campaign which emphasised an exceptionalist and nativist view of America’s place in the world. Reviewing the president’s tweets and speeches in the lead up to the 2018 midterm elections, Corina Lacatus finds that Trump’s far-right populist rhetoric now links closely with […]
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Our recent article published in Politics takes a rhetorical approach to understanding the politics of Donald J. Trump’s presidency by analyzing his “rhetorical signature” as it appeared in his 2015 speech announcing his entry into the presidential race. This announcement speech foreshadowed much of the more controversial elements of his presidency. Specifically, we emphasize Trump’s […]
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When issues of personal vice come onto the American political scene, they persistently stay on the agenda. What are the odds that an issue like drug usage could suddenly lurch onto the national agenda under President Donald Trump’s administration? The ingredients and political dynamics are currently present for drug policy to become a big issue […]
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The term ‘populist’ is so nebulously undefined, due ironically to it being an over-defined term, that the eternal chicken-and-egg question of meaning has never held such weight. In other words, are we defining ‘populist’ by its expressions in the world, or are we defining political movements according to a clearly defined set of criteria that […]
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What drives protest behaviours? Does dissatisfaction with the current government lead voters to act against it? Alternatively, would pervasive disaffection with the partisan and political climate lead voters to act against the system? Our research suggests both have a role in the psychology of political behaviour, although perhaps not both aspects leading voters to the […]
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With the tenth anniversary of the Arab Spring approaching, political and academic analysis will revisit possible causes for the failure of popular movements across the region to deliver upon their aspirations for peaceful political change. One crucial part of the answer is of course the ferocious response by authoritarian regimes. Early on, the brutal repression […]
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With the Brexit political drama and the Trump presidency, analysts and journalists alike have accounted for a transformation of the common sense and the dealignment of the political landscape by focusing on the use of language, questioning the limits of acceptability and the effectiveness of rhetoric. In parallel to this shifting political reality, rhetorical analysis […]
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